neck, broad shoulders, capacious thorax, prominent abdomen, low stature, robust limbs, and considerable corpulence; this last indication, however, is liable to many exceptions, for dry and spare constitutions, if any confidence is to be placed in the comparative tables of Rochoux, are more frequently even attacked with apoplexy, than the plethoric. Under this subject we may notice that the habitual use of tight ligatures disposes to the disease. Portal speaks of an ambassador who was attacked with apoplexy, after having long employed general compression, for the reduction of excessive corpulence. Dr. Donald Monro states that he has known soldiers carried off by apoplexy, in consequence of stricture on the veins of the neck, from their having been obliged to wear their cravats too tight. Winslow has made a similar observation in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for the year 1741.
Probable period that has elapsed since the extinction of life.—Before the process of putrefaction has commenced, we can only adduce an opinion upon this subject from the circumstance of the coldness, rigidity, and general complexion of the body. Under ordinary circumstances, the body looses its vital heat in a very short space of time, and cadaverous[1] stiffness takes place and continues until relaxed by the progress of putrefaction; but there are many circumstances that appear capable of controlling and modifying this general result; the heat of the body is not only abstracted with very different degrees of celerity in different situations, but even in the same situation, in death from different causes. Portal and other physiologists have observed, that after
- ↑ See our observations upon this phenomenon at page 13 of the present volume.
